Dominion

Chapter Five

FRANK SAT LOOKING THROUGH the window at the grounds of the mental hospital, the sodden lawn and empty flowerbeds. It had been raining since early morning, hard and steady. The drug they gave him, the Largactil, made him feel calm and sleepy most of the time. In the Admissions Block he had been on a large dose, but after he was stabilized and had moved to a main ward, they reduced the dose and in his mind now the periods of dull calmness were sometimes broken by violent flashes of memory: the school; Mrs Baker and her spirit guide; how his hand had become crippled. He suspected he was getting used to the drug, lessening its effect, but he did not want to go back on a larger dose because he needed his mind to be clear enough to keep his secret.

He had come into a little side room off the main ward that Monday morning, the quiet room as it was called, partly because the other patients frightened him, and also to get away from the overwhelming smell of cigarettes. Frank had never smoked. At school he knew he couldn’t dare join the other boys smoking behind the boiler room; tobacco had passed him by like so much else. The patients were constantly wheedling the staff for tobacco, a Woodbine or just a dog-end. The hospital ceilings were all brown with it. He sat in an armchair, which, like all the hospital furniture, was huge, old and heavy. His right hand hurt, as it often did when it rained, pain coursing through the two damaged fingers, shrunken and claw-like.

It had surprised Frank, when he arrived at the hospital three weeks before, that there were no bars on the windows. But as the police car that brought him drove through the gates he had glimpsed beyond the high wall, on the inner side, a broad ditch full of water, screened from view from the hospital by privet hedges. One of the patients on the admissions ward, a middle-aged man with lined, chalk-white features and wild hair, had told him he planned to escape, swim the ditch and climb the wall. The law said if you escaped from a loony bin and weren’t recaptured in fourteen days you were free. Frank looked at the man in a grey wool hospital suit that was even more shapeless than Frank’s own. Even if escape were possible, which he doubted, there was nowhere for him to go now. After what had happened at his flat his neighbours would alert the police as soon as they set eyes on him again. It had been like that at school, nowhere to run. The gates were always open, but he knew if ever he ran away, got off that bleak Scottish hillside and somehow managed to get home to Esher, his mother would simply bring him back. The mental hospital reminded him constantly of the horrors of school – the dormitory with its iron beds, the uniformed inmates who most of the time ignored him. And an all-male world; like all mental hospitals this one was divided into a men’s side and women’s side, the sexes kept entirely apart. From the looks he sometimes got Frank could tell the patients knew what he had done, perhaps were even afraid of him. The staff, too, reminded him of his teachers, with their sharp military manner and quick brutality if someone got difficult. Frank had tried to avoid thoughts of school for years but now he was constantly reminded; though school had been worse than here.

That afternoon Frank had an appointment with Dr Wilson, the Medical Superintendent, in his office in the Admissions Building. He didn’t want to go, he just wanted to stay in the quiet room. Sometimes other patients came in but he was alone today. He hoped he might be forgotten – patients’ appointments were forgotten now and then – but after an hour the door opened and a young man in the peaked cap and brown serge uniform of a senior attendant came in. Frank hadn’t seen him before. He was short and stocky, with a thin face and a prominent nose which at some time had been badly broken. His brown eyes were alert. He was carrying a big, rolled-up umbrella. He gave Frank a nod and a friendly smile. Frank was surprised; mostly the attendants treated the patients like recalcitrant children.

‘Frank Muncaster?’ the attendant asked in a broad Scottish accent. ‘How’re ye daen?’ Frank’s face spasmed into a wide rictus, showing all his teeth, his chimp grin. Hearing a Scottish accent could unnerve him, because it reminded him of the school. But the attendant’s accent was very different from the elongated vowels and rolling ‘R’s of middle-class Edinburgh that had prevailed at Strangmans; he spoke quickly, the words running together, a more guttural but, to Frank, less threatening accent.

The attendant’s eyes widened a little; everyone’s did when they saw that grin of Frank’s for the first time. He said, ‘I’m Ben. I’ve come to take you to Dr Wilson. They said in the day room you’d be here.’

Reluctantly Frank followed Ben out, through the day room, where several patients sat slumped in front of the television. Children’s Hour was on, a puppet in a striped uniform dancing manically on the end of its strings.

They walked along the echoing corridors to the main door, then out into the rain. Ben raised his umbrella and motioned Frank to stand under it with him. They splashed along the path between the lawns. Ben said, conversationally, ‘Expect you saw Dr Wilson on the admissions ward.’

‘Yes. I saw him last week, too. He said he wants me to have some treatment.’ Frank looked sidelong at Ben; he had said little to anyone since his admission but this attendant seemed friendly.

‘What sort of treatment?’

Frank shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘He likes new treatments, Dr Wilson. I suppose some of his ideas aren’t bad – this new drug Largactil, it’s better than the old phenobarb and the paraldehyde – Jesus, how that stuff used to stink.’

‘I told him I wanted to leave, go back to work, but he said I wasn’t nearly ready. He asked if I’d like to talk about my parents; I don’t know why.’

‘Aye, he does that.’ Ben’s voice was amused, half-contemptuous.

‘I said what was the point, my father died before I was born and Mother’s dead, too, now. He looked cross with me.’

‘You were a scientist afore you came here, weren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ A touch of pride entered Frank’s voice. ‘I’m a research associate at Birmingham University. Geology department.’

‘I would have thought you could have afforded the Private Villa then. Ye get yer own room there.’

Frank shook his head sadly. ‘Apparently as I’ve been certified I’ve lost the right to control my money. And there’s no-one to be a trustee.’

Ben shook his head sympathetically. ‘The almoner should sort that out. You should ask Wilson.’

They reached the Admissions Block, a square, two-storey rectangle, redbrick like all the asylum buildings. In the doorway Ben shook out the umbrella. Frank glanced back at the enormous main building. It stood on a little hill; across the countryside, on a clear day, you could see the haze over Birmingham in the distance. From outside, the asylum, with its many-windowed front and neat grounds, looked like a country house; inside it was quite different, a thousand patients packed into cavernous wards with dilapidated furniture and peeling paint. Two nurses from the women’s wing, capes over their starched uniforms, came out of the block. ‘Good morning, Mr Hall,’ one said cheerfully to Ben. ‘Filthy day.’

‘Aye, it is.’

The nurses raised umbrellas and walked quickly down the drive to the locked gates. Frank watched them go. Ben touched his arm. ‘Come on, pal, wake up,’ he said gently.

‘I wish I could get out.’

‘Not after what you did, Frank,’ Ben said gravely. ‘Come on, let’s get ye inside.’

Frank’s mind shied away from the event that had led him here. But sometimes, when the effects of the Largactil were wearing off, he would think about it.

It had started with his mother’s death, a month before. She was past seventy, a little, bent, querulous old woman living alone in the house in Esher. Frank visited her a couple of times a year, out of duty. His older brother, Edgar, only saw her on his rare visits from California. When Frank went to see her, Mrs Muncaster would compare him unfavourably with his brother, as she had all her life. There Edgar was, married with children, a physicist in a great American university, while Frank had been stuck in the same boring job for ten years. She lived for Edgar’s letters, she said. Frank didn’t think his mother saw anyone apart from him these days, as her involvement with spiritualism had ended five years before when Mrs Baker, her spiritual guru, had died, and the weekly séances in the dining room had ended.

The police had phoned Frank at work to tell him his mother had had a stroke while out shopping, and died two hours later in hospital. Frank sent a telegram to Edgar, who replied, to Frank’s surprise, at once, saying he would come over for the funeral. Frank did not want to see Edgar, he loathed him; but even though he didn’t like train journeys, he had travelled from Birmingham to Esher to meet Edgar at the house where they had been brought up. On the journey he wondered what his brother would be like. He was an American citizen now. The letters their mother showed him were always full of his busy life at Berkeley, how he loved San Francisco, how his wife and three children were getting on.

But when he’d visited his mother at Easter he had found that Edgar, for the first time in his life, had upset her. He had written to her to say that he and his wife were getting a divorce. Mrs Muncaster had been shocked, wringing her gnarled hands and telling Frank she hadn’t liked Edgar’s wife the one time he’d brought her to England: she was brassy and full of herself, a typical American. His mother had cried then, saying she would never see her grandchildren, adding bitterly that Frank was hardly likely to give her any now. Frank wondered if all the shock and distress had led to her stroke.

The crowds on the train frightened him; he was glad to get off at Esher. He walked to the house. It was a cold, misty afternoon. A boy on one of the new Vespa scooters buzzed past him, making him jump. When he entered the house he was aware of an emptiness, a new silence. Mrs Baker would have said it was because a spirit had gone over. Frank shivered slightly. There was dust everywhere, peeling wallpaper, damp patches. Somehow he hadn’t noticed how badly his mother had let the house go.

Edgar arrived a few hours later. He’d put on weight since Frank had last seen him. He was forty now, bespectacled and red-faced, his hair receding, the youthful handsomeness Frank had envied just a memory. ‘Well, Frank,’ he said heavily. ‘So, she’s gone then.’ Just as Edgar’s voice had taken on a Scottish accent while he was at Strangmans, so now he spoke with an American twang.

Frank took Edgar round the house. ‘It’s in a bad state,’ Edgar said. ‘Some of these rooms don’t look like anyone’s been in them for years.’ They went into the dining room. There were mouse droppings on the floor. ‘Hell,’ Edgar said irritably. ‘I don’t know how she could’ve lived like this. Didn’t you try to get her to move?’

Frank didn’t answer. He was looking at the big dining table. The electric light above still had the cheesecloth shawl draped over it; Mrs Baker had needed muted light to commune with the spirit world.

Edgar pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘What are house prices like in England these days?’

‘Going down. The economy’s not doing well.’

‘Best thing we can do is get shot of this place as soon as we can. Sell to some developer.’

Frank touched the table. ‘Remember the séances?’

‘Lot of bloody nonsense.’ Edgar laughed scoffingly. ‘They were all nuts. Mum, too. Believing Dad came through to her every week, just for her to tell him off about going to war and leaving her in 1914.’

‘I don’t think she ever forgave him for going away to fight the war.’

Edgar looked at his brother, considering. ‘Maybe that’s why she didn’t like you much, cos you looked so much like him.’

That evening Edgar suggested they go out to eat so they walked to a restaurant a few streets away. It wasn’t much of a place. They had beef stew with potatoes and Brussels sprouts, all swimming in watery gravy. Edgar ordered a beer. Frank, as usual, drank little but he noticed Edgar was drinking fast, one beer after another.

‘The food in this country’s still bloody awful,’ Edgar said. ‘In California, you can get anything you want, well cooked and lots of it.’ He shook his head. ‘This country looks more miserable and downtrodden every time I come.’

‘Did you go to the San Francisco Olympics in the summer?’

‘No. It made getting around difficult, I can tell you. The next ones are in Rome, aren’t they? Old Mussolini will mess it up, the Wops can’t organize for toffee. By the way, I keep seeing the letters V and R painted on walls. What’s that all about?’

‘The Resistance signs. R for Resistance, Churchill’s V for Victory sign.’

‘I’d give him a V sign.’ Edgar laughed. ‘How’s Beaverbrook? Still licking the Germans’ arses?’

Frank said, ‘Yes, yes, he is.’

‘Thank God Britain lost the war and Roosevelt lost the election in 1940, and Taft did his deal with the Japs. Though if that do-gooding leftie Adlai Stevenson wins the election in November he could start sticking his nose into Europe again.’

‘Do you think so?’ Frank asked, perking up a little.

Edgar gave him a sharp look. ‘I hear these Resistance people are making trouble here. Stealing weapons from police stations, arming strikers, blowing things up, even killing people.’

Frank said, daringly, ‘Maybe Stevenson should stick his nose in here, sort it all out.’

‘America needs to mind its own business. Nobody’s going to make trouble for us,’ Edgar added complacently. ‘Not now we’ve got the atom bomb.’

Four years earlier, in 1948, the Americans claimed to have exploded an atomic bomb, and there was even a film released of it going off in the New Mexico desert. The Germans said it had been faked. ‘I’ve never been sure those stories are true,’ Frank said. ‘I know the atom bomb’s theoretically possible, but the amount of uranium you’d need is so colossal. I’ve heard the Germans are trying to build one, too, but they haven’t got anywhere. If they had we’d have heard about it.’ He looked at his brother, scientist to scientist. ‘What do you think?’

Edgar gave him a hard stare. ‘We’ve got the atom bomb. We’ve other things, too, new types of incendiary bomb, chemical weapons – in a few years we’ll have intercontinental missiles. The Germans probably will, too, by then, but we’ll have atom bombs on top of ours.’

‘And then where will we all be?’ Frank asked sadly.

‘I don’t know about you, but we’ll be safe.’

‘While Britain’s tied to Germany.’ Frank shook his head. He had always hated the Nazis and Blackshirts, the whole pack of bully-boy thugs. He had wished Britain hadn’t surrendered even back in 1940.

Edgar had never liked Frank talking back to him. He frowned as he took another gulp of beer. ‘Got a girlfriend yet?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Never had one, have you?’

Frank didn’t answer.

‘Women are bloody bitches,’ Edgar announced suddenly, so loud that people at neighbouring tables stared. ‘So I had a fling with my secretary, so bloody what? Now Ella’s taking half my salary for alimony.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I could do with my share of the money from Mum’s house.’

‘I don’t mind. We can sell up if you like.’ So that was why Edgar had really come over; he wanted his inheritance.

Edgar looked relieved. ‘Are the deeds at the house?’ he asked.

‘Yes. In a drawer. With Mum’s bank books.’

‘I’ll take those, if you don’t mind. For – what do you call it – probate?’

‘If you like.’

Edgar asked, ‘You still working at that lab assistant job at Birmingham University?’

‘I’m not a lab assistant. I’m a research associate.’

‘What are you researching, then?’ Edgar’s tone was belligerent; Frank realized he was very drunk. He remembered a lecturer at Birmingham who had got divorced and turned to drink; he had quietly been given premature retirement.

‘The structure of meteorites,’ he answered. ‘How their elements bond together.’

‘Meteorites!’ Edgar laughed.

‘What are you working on?’

Edgar tapped the side of his nose in a ridiculous drunk’s gesture, setting his glasses askew, then lowered his voice. ‘Government work. Can’t tell you. They weren’t that happy about my coming over here for the funeral. I have to report to the embassy every day.’ He picked up the menu. ‘What’ve they got for pudding? Jesus, spotted dick.’

Mrs Muncaster’s funeral took place a few days later. Frank arranged it with the local vicar, careful not to tell him of Mrs Muncaster’s religious views. Apart from Frank and Edgar, only a couple of women from the days of the séances came; Frank had found their details in his mother’s address book. They were old now, sad and faded. After the service one of them came up to the brothers and said their mother was with her husband on the other side now, walking through the gardens of the spirit world. Frank thanked her politely though Edgar flashed her a look of distaste. As they walked away from the cemetery Edgar said, ‘Talking of spirits, I could do with a drink.’

They went to a pub in Esher High Street. Edgar drank heavily, but this time didn’t get aggressive. To Frank the service had just been a rite, a performance like the séances, but it seemed to have affected Edgar. He said, ‘Strange to think mother’s gone. God, she was an odd one.’

‘Yes, she was.’ There, at least, the brothers could agree.

‘I have to go back soon, I’m needed at Berkeley. But I could stay on a few days.’ He looked at his brother. ‘It would help me if we could get the house on the market.’

Frank had had more than enough of Edgar; he had been counting the hours till the funeral was over. ‘You do that if you want,’ he said. ‘I need to get back to Birmingham today.’

‘You could stay here a day or two. I don’t know when we’ll meet up again. Jesus,’ he said again, ‘Mum’s gone. Everyone in my life’s bloody gone,’ he added self-pityingly.

Frank spoke quickly. ‘I said I was going back to work tomorrow.’ He stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Edgar, I have to go now, really, if I’m to get back in time.’

Edgar’s mouth set in a sulky pout. He stared at Frank through his glasses. Then he held out a big meaty hand. Frank took it. ‘Well,’ Edgar said heavily. ‘That’s that.’ Then a nasty glint came into his eyes as he nodded at Frank’s hand, the damaged outer fingers. ‘How’s that, nowadays?’ he asked.

‘A bit painful in bad weather.’

‘It was a strange accident, wasn’t it?’

Frank met his brother’s eyes and realized that Edgar knew what had really happened. He’d been at university by then but he kept up with friends from Strangmans and someone must have told him. Frank stood up. ‘Goodbye, Edgar,’ he said, and walked quickly away.

He went back to Birmingham and returned to work. It was a beautiful October, sunny mellow days succeeding each other, yellow leaves falling gently from the trees.

For the last ten years Frank had lived in a big Victorian villa divided into leasehold flats. He had four rooms on the first floor. The building was not well maintained, the paint on the front door and the windows peeling, half the sash windows rotten. One Sunday, ten days after his mother’s funeral, he was sitting reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea when his doorbell rang. He started violently, then went downstairs and opened the front door. Edgar was standing there, obviously the worse for wear, although it was only three in the afternoon. Frank stared at him blankly.

‘Surprised to see me?’ Edgar asked. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

‘Yes. Sorry.’ Frank turned and went back upstairs, Edgar following. Frank’s heart was racing. Why had he come? What did he want? They went back into the flat, which Frank had furnished from junk shops when he moved in.

‘Jeez,’ Edgar said. ‘This reminds me of Mum’s house. I’ve put it with an agent, by the way, got a lawyer to get the probate started.’

‘All right,’ Frank said.

‘I decided to come up and tell you. You should get a phone. Most people in the States have a phone.’

‘I don’t need one.’

Edgar looked at two dusty framed photographs on a little table. ‘You’ve got one of Dad, I see. God, he did look like you.’

Frank looked at the sepia portrait of his father in uniform, staring fixedly and uncomfortably at the camera. Frank sometimes wondered if he was seeing the trenches, anticipating them.

‘What’s the other one?’ Edgar asked.

‘My year at Oxford.’ Why has he come? Frank thought. What does he want?

Edgar crossed to the bookcase, looking at the well-thumbed science-fiction novels. ‘Hey, I remember some of these from when you were a kid. You were always reading them during the holidays.’ He turned and gave Frank a rubbery half-drunk smile. ‘I’m flying back tomorrow evening, I thought I’d come up and tell you about the house.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘I didn’t want to part on bad terms.’

‘Oh.’

‘Mebbe I could stay over, perhaps come and see your labs tomorrow.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Frank babbled. ‘It’s not convenient. I’ve only got the one bed here, you see.’

Edgar looked hurt, then angry and somehow baffled.

‘I don’t really get visitors,’ Frank added.

Edgar’s face set. ‘No. I don’t suppose you do. Mind if I sit down?’ He weaved his way to an armchair. ‘Oh God, Frank, don’t put on that monkey grin.’

Frank remembered something horrible that had happened when he was twelve. He and Edgar had come home from Strangmans for the summer holidays. Edgar was sixteen then, tall and blond, and was developing a strutting arrogance. Their mother had suggested, unusually, that they all go out together to the zoo. ‘We don’t think enough about the animals,’ she had said. ‘Mrs Baker says they have souls just like us.’ She had given them one of her sad, serious looks.

They went to Whipsnade, and walked round the enclosures. As they passed the monkey house Edgar said, ‘Let’s go in here.’ He led the way, Frank following reluctantly with their mother, who had retreated into one of her dreamy, distant states. Inside it was horrible, a long concrete corridor with barred enclosures along the sides, a rank, filthy smell, clumps of straw the monkeys had thrown out of their cages littering the floor. A few people walked along, laughing at the antics of the small monkeys. A big orange orang-utan glared at them from the dimness of its pen. Edgar looked at Frank, then turned to their mother. ‘Look at the chimp, Mum!’ There was only one chimpanzee, sitting alone in its cage on a pile of dirty straw, staring at them. Edgar waved a hand and the chimpanzee leaned back, baring its teeth in a grin that Frank somehow knew meant fear and terror.

‘What an ugly thing,’ Mrs Muncaster said.

Edgar laughed. ‘Doesn’t that grin remind you of Frank?’

Mrs Muncaster looked at Frank forlornly. ‘Yes, I suppose it does in a way.’

‘The boys at school call him Monkey because of that grin. Monkey Muncaster.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t do it, Frank,’ Mrs Muncaster said.

Frank had felt so hot he thought he might faint. Edgar smirked at him. Mrs Muncaster said, ‘It’s awfully smelly in here. I can’t imagine these things in the spirit gardens, I must say. Let’s go and see the birds.’

And now Edgar was in his house. Sitting in the moth-eaten armchair, he looked round the room again. ‘I thought you’d have something better by now.’

‘It does me.’

Edgar gave him that baffled stare again. ‘I never understood why you did science at university. Was it to try and compete with me, show me you could do it?’

‘No.’ Frank heard the tremble of anger in his voice. ‘I did it because I like it. It’s what I’m good at.’

Edgar looked disappointed. Then he sneered, just as he had at the zoo. ‘Studying meteorites?’

‘Yes.’

Edgar shifted in his chair. ‘Got anything to drink?’

‘Only tea and coffee.’ They stared at each other. ‘I don’t think you should drink any more. You – you’ve had enough.’

Edgar reddened. He set his lips, then leaned forward. ‘Do you know what I do, what my work is?’

‘No. Look, Edgar, perhaps you should go. There’s nothing to drink here . . .’

Edgar stood up, swaying slightly, his expression threatening now. Frank stood too, suddenly afraid. Edgar walked across the dusty carpet, right up to him, then said, his breath stinking of alcohol, in Frank’s face, ‘I’ll tell you what I bloody do.’

Edgar told him: told him what his work was and, as one scientist to another, how they had managed it. The explanation made total, horrible sense. ‘So you see, we cracked it,’ he crowed, his voice full of beery satisfaction.

Frank staggered back, face full of horror. Now he realized why Edgar’s people had been reluctant to let him come to the funeral. All he had ever wanted was to be left in peace and now there would be no peace, no safety, for the rest of his life. Horrors as bad as any in science fiction had been created and Edgar had told him how. He stared at Edgar, suddenly understanding that his brother – a lonely, broken man – wanted Frank to know his power. ‘You shouldn’t have told me,’ he said in a sort of desperate whisper. ‘Dear God. Have you told anyone else?’ He grabbed at his hair, found himself shouting. ‘Jesus, the Germans mustn’t find out . . .’

Edgar frowned, the seriousness of what he had just done beginning to penetrate his fuddled brain. ‘Of course I haven’t told anyone,’ he answered sharply. ‘Calm down.’

‘You’re drunk. You’ve been drunk half the time since you came here.’ Frank reached out and grabbed his brother’s arm. ‘You must go home, you mustn’t tell anybody else. If anyone found out what you’d told me—’

‘All right!’ Edgar was looking anxious now. ‘All right. Forget I said it—’

‘Forget!’ Frank howled. ‘How – can – I – forget!’

‘For God’s sake shut up, stop shouting!’ Edgar was sweating now, his face beetroot. He stared at his brother for a long moment. Then he said quietly, as much to himself as to Frank, ‘Even if you did talk, no-one would believe you. They’d think you were mad, they probably do already – look at you, grinning little cripple—’

And then, for only the second time in his life, Frank lost control. He ran at his brother, all flailing arms and legs. Edgar was much bigger than Frank but he was very drunk and he stepped backwards, raising his arms ineffectually to try and defend himself. Frank came on, hitting him again and again, and Edgar tripped and fell over, against the window. His weight broke the rotten sash and he fell through it in a shower of glass, arms windmilling, wildly crying out as he disappeared.

Frank stared blankly at the smashed window. The October breeze blew into the room. There was a groan from the garden below. He stepped forward, hesitantly, and looked out of the window. Edgar was lying on his back on the stone flags below, clutching his right arm and writhing in pain. Frank thought, that’s it, I’ve done it, the police will come and they’ll find out everything. He screamed at the top of his voice, ‘It’ll be the end of the world!’ Rage and terror filled his whole being. He turned and, pushing the table over, ran into the kitchen and opened cupboards and pulled out plates, sending them crashing to the floor. The insane notion had come into his head that if he smashed and broke everything in sight somehow he could drive the terrible knowledge of what Edgar had told him from his head, along with all the rage that filled it. He was still running around the flat, breaking furniture, bleeding from several cuts, when the police arrived.

Dr Wilson was a small round man with a bald head, wearing a white coat over a brown three-piece suit. He sat at a big cluttered desk. The eyes behind his tortoiseshell glasses were keen but weary. As Frank entered he put down a document stamped with the government crest: shield and lion and unicorn. Frank saw the title, ‘Sterilization of the Unfit; Consultative Document’. Wilson gave a quick, tired flicker of a smile. ‘How are you today, Frank?’

‘All right.’

‘What have you been doing?’

‘Just sitting on the ward. They didn’t take us for our walk round the airing courts today, because of the rain.’

‘No,’ Dr Wilson said, smiling. ‘We’re organizing a special day out for some suitable patients in a couple of weeks. To Coventry Cathedral. The Dean has offered to take a dozen patients on a tour, with some attendants, of course. I wondered if you might like to go. It’s a beautiful medieval building. Fifteenth century, I believe. I’m looking for some – educated – patients to take. Might you be interested?’

‘No, thank you,’ Frank answered, his face twisting into its monkey grin. He wasn’t interested in churches, had never been to one – Mrs Baker hadn’t approved – and to go in his shapeless hospital clothes, part of a group of lunatics, would be shaming.

Dr Wilson considered his response, then said quietly, ‘The charge nurse on the ward says you avoid the other patients.’

‘I just like sitting on my own.’

‘Do they frighten you?’ Dr Wilson asked.

‘Sometimes. I want to go home,’ Frank said pleadingly.

Dr Wilson shook his head. ‘It does pain me, Frank, that someone of your education, your class, should end up on a public ward. You’re actually Dr Muncaster, aren’t you? A PhD?’

‘Yes.’

‘You shouldn’t really be with the pauper lunatics. Some of those poor people – they barely have minds any more. But I can’t just let you leave, Frank. You pushed your brother through a first-floor window. It’s a miracle he got off with a broken arm. To say nothing of screaming about the end of the world. Someone heard that out in the street. There’s still a police case open: causing grievous bodily harm is an imprisonable offence. Fortunately your brother didn’t want to prosecute. As it is, you’ve been certified as insane and you must stay here till you’re cured. How are you getting on with the reduced Largactil dose?’

‘All right. It makes me feel calm.’

A self-satisfied smile crossed Wilson’s face. ‘Good. This is one of the first British hospitals to use Largactil. My idea. It’s French, you know, so it’s more expensive with the import duty. But I persuaded the Board. My cousin working in the Ministry of Health gives me a certain influence.’ He gave a superior little smile.

‘It makes my mouth dry. And I feel tired.’

‘It keeps you calm. That’s the main thing, in the circumstances.’

‘I’ll never do anything like that again.’

The doctor made a steeple of his hands. They were small and surprisingly delicate. ‘The question is, why did you do it in the first place?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If we’re going to help you, you have to talk about it.’ He pursed his small mouth. ‘Do you believe the end of the world is coming? Some religious people do.’

Frank shook his head. The end could come, but religion would have nothing to do with it.

Dr Wilson persisted. ‘When you arrived you were asked what your religion was. You said your mother was a spiritualist but you didn’t believe in God.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did your mother take you to spiritualist churches?’

‘No. She had séances at her house with a woman who said she could contact the dead.’

‘Do you think she could, this woman?’

‘No,’ Frank answered flatly.

‘So you didn’t believe in any of it?’

‘No.’

‘You have no relatives apart from your brother.’

‘No.’

‘No-one’s been to visit.’

‘They never did like me in the labs. I didn’t fit in.’ Frank felt tears coming now.

‘Well, there’s a stigma, people are frightened of asylums. Even relatives usually stop coming after a time.’ The doctor shifted in his seat. ‘But if we’re to get you into the Private Villa, which I think would be more suitable for you, the board will need funds.’

‘I’ve got money. Surely your administration can sort it out.’

Dr Wilson smiled wryly. ‘You can be clear and direct when you wish, can’t you? The problem, Frank, is that as a lunatic your money has to be held by a trustee. That’s the law. For that we need a relative.’

‘There’s only my brother. They said he’s gone back to America.’

‘We know. We’ve been trying to get in touch with him.’ Dr Wilson raised his eyebrows. ‘I even went to the trouble of telephoning him at his university in California. But they said he’s away on government business and can’t be contacted.’

‘He won’t reply,’ Frank said bitterly.

‘You sound angry with him. You must have been, to do what you did.’

Frank said nothing.

‘Why did you become a scientist like your brother?’ Dr Wilson asked, his tone conversational again. ‘Did you want to compete with him?’

‘No,’ Frank replied wearily. ‘I was just interested in science, in geology, how old the Earth is, what a little speck in space we live on. I did it for myself.’ He spoke with a sudden vehemence.

‘Nothing to do with Edgar?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Frank, if I’m to help, you must tell me more. I wonder if a course of electric shock treatment might help jolt you out of this withdrawn state. We shall have to start thinking about it.’

Afterwards the Scottish attendant, Ben, took Frank back to the ward. The rain had stopped. The light was beginning to fade. ‘How did it go?’ Ben asked.

Frank looked at Ben again. The thought crossed his mind that Dr Wilson might have asked him to report back on what Frank said. So he fell back on his staple answer. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Lucky youse is middle-class and educated, Wilson’s no’ interested in the chronic cases, the poor sods wi’ no money that have been on the wards for years. He thinks he’s too good for this place anyway. His father was a doctor, his cousin’s a civil servant at the Ministry of Health. Aul’ snob. Class is everything.’ Ben spoke quietly, but with an undertone of bitterness.

‘He talked about shock treatment,’ Frank said hesitantly. He swallowed. ‘I’ve overheard other patients discussing that.’

Ben grimaced. ‘It’s not nice. They tie you down with leather straps and put electric shocks through your brain. They say it cures depression. I think it does, sometimes. But they’re a bit free and easy with it. And they should use anaesthetic.’

‘It hurts?’

Ben nodded.

‘Have you seen it done?’

‘Aye.’

Frank’s heart began to pound. He took deep breaths. His bad hand hurt and he massaged the two atrophied fingers. Their footsteps slapped along the wet path.

Ben said, ‘There are worse things. Lobotomies – a surgeon comes up from London every few months to do those. Cuts part of your brain out. Jesus, the state of some patients afterwards. Don’t worry, they won’t do that to you.’ Ben gave Frank a sudden guilty look. ‘Sorry I mentioned it.’

Frank asked, cautiously, ‘What part of Scotland do you come from?’

‘Glasgow.’ Ben smiled. ‘Glesca. D’ye know Scotland?’

‘I went to school near Edinburgh.’

‘I thought I heard a trace of Morningside. One of those Edinburgh private schools?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which one?’

‘Strangmans,’ Frank answered quickly. He wanted to change the subject.

‘I’ve heard those places can be hard. Harder than Glesca schools even.’

‘Yes.’

‘Still, I hear there’s public schools just as tough in England.’

‘Yes, perhaps,’ Frank said, his voice catching. ‘Before I came in, I heard on the news about this new law they’re planning, the compulsory sterilizations. Dr Wilson was reading something about it.’

‘That’s just for the mentally deficient, and what they call the moral degenerates. Wilson’ll be quite happy to see them sterilized. Dregs of society, that’s how he sees them, the auld scunner.’ That bitter note in Ben’s voice again. He looked at Frank’s bad hand. ‘What happened there?’

‘An accident. At school.’ Frank turned to him. ‘I want to get out of here.’

‘Ye canna, no’ unless Wilson says you’re sane again.’ Ben considered, then added, ‘Unless someone can bring influence, maybe get you transferred, maybe tae a private clinic away from here. What about your brother?’

Frank shook his head despairingly. ‘Edgar won’t even take their calls.’

‘What about the people where you work?’

‘Dr Wilson asked me that. They wouldn’t be interested. They don’t really want me in the department. I’ve known that for a while.’ Frank’s face spasmed into his smiling rictus.

They had reached the door of the main building. ‘I’m going to be working on your ward for a while,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe I could help with finding someone to help ye.’

‘There’s nobody.’

‘What about people you knew at school? Or at university? You must have gone to university.’

An image of David Fitzgerald came into Frank’s head; an autumn evening sitting with him in their rooms at Oxford, talking about Hitler and appeasement. His astonished realization that for the first time in his life someone was actually interested in what he was saying. As this attendant Ben seemed to be, for some reason Frank couldn’t fathom. He hadn’t been in touch with David properly for years, but at one time he had been closer to him than anyone. ‘There might be someone,’ he said, cautiously.